Helen Gao

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Helen hails from Beijing, where she spent the first 17 years of her life before heading to the US for high school and college. After a one-year stint at The Atlantic magazine, she is currently back to her home city and working as a freelancer. She constantly craves for hot pot while in the US, and for New Haven pizza while in China.

Articles by Author

BEIJING — In the northern outskirts of Beijing, past the jungle of high-rise apartment buildings and vehicle-clogged streets that comprises the Chinese capital, sits a sprawling compound ringed by rows of hawthorn and walnut trees. …

BEIJING — For those Chinese who have carried their tales of woe for hundreds of miles and suffered numerous bureaucratic setbacks, this seems like mockery. On April 23, China passed a new law banning petitioners from taking grievances …

BEIJING — In the winter of 1963, as China recuperated from a horrific famine, a group of college students in Beijing repelled by the bombastic Communist Party agitprop around them decided to get together to …

I have hundreds of memories of the ceremony, the earliest of which took place in the playground of my elementary school: A dirt opening ringed with cypresses and gingko trees, a small brick-and-concrete platform, and …

In third grade, I had my first private English tutoring lesson. My teacher was a 21-year old English major at Peking University. “Say ‘Thank you.’ Xie xie—Thank you.” “S…ank you.” “It’s not ‘sank you.’” She …